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Save Hannah the Vannah
Hemel Hempstead, England, United Kingdom
Aim
Raise £5,000 to renovate my 1992 Renault Trafic Camper into a travelling workshop, to travel the UK teaching the mindful craft of crochet.
Save Hannah the Vannah
Raise £5,000 to renovate my 1992 Renault Trafic Camper into a travelling workshop, so I may travel the UK teaching the mindful craft of crochet.
Who I am
My name is Louisa Sheward, and I'm a crochet designer and tutor living in Hertfordshire, England with my sassy 3.5-year-old daughter Elliotte. My grandmother taught me to crochet when I was 5, and it has been the craft that has stuck with me throughout my life. As an adult, it became my crutch to help me through depression and anxiety.
After I was made redundant from my job in 2017, I decided to turn my passion into a career and share the wonderful benefits of crochet with others. I started to teach from home, then at craft shows…and then I decided to take the plunge and open a yarn shop. I moved back home with my parents to give my business everything I had.
Over the past 3 years I've taught hundreds of people to crochet, and I’ve shared their joy as they fell in love with the craft. In 2018, I won the Mollie Makes Handmade Champion Award for the communities I have created through crochet, which was an incredibly proud moment for me.
I am passionate about mental health and ending the stigma around talking about it. In 2019, I raised more than £2,000 for UK mental health charities with my Love Yourself Crochet Mandala campaign.
Hannah's Story
I've met some wonderful humans since I started teaching crochet. One person in particular was Hannah. She came to my classes from the start – sometimes it was just the two of us, setting the world to rights. After she'd been coming along for a while, she told me she had cancer. She had beaten it before, but it was back. And this time it was terminal.
Hannah crocheted more blankets in the two years that I knew her than I have in my entire life. She wanted to leave each of her loved ones a gift they could snuggle under. She learned to crochet so she could have something to do at her hospital appointments, and in it she found a craft that would carry on her memory after she was gone. Hannah showed me how much of a difference you can make in this world in a short space of time.
Hannah helped us decorate my new shop just before it opened, but sadly she was admitted to a hospice before the opening day. I'd never lost a friend to death before. I was hit by grief, and I wished I'd told her how much she had meant to me when I had the chance. But the crochet magic lingered. Her family thanked me for giving her a skill that she was able to immerse herself in during her final days. She had visited yarn shows all over the country, and even ticked Yarndale off her wish list! The last time we spoke, we talked about how she wished she had made it to the Edinburgh Yarn Festival. At her funeral, she arrived in style in a campervan, covered in crochet.
What about the camper?
Roll forward 18 months, and my life was at rock bottom. I suffered a difficult break up in my personal life, and I lost my yarn shop. I was desperately low mentally, my anxiety had peaked, and I felt completely lost. I didn't know where I was going to go from here. I still wanted to share my love for crochet with the world, but I felt like it was all over.
I found inspiration in crochet. My crochet friends/followers/supporters lifted me up time and again. I realised that teaching the craft gives me solace, and it helps others in ways I was still discovering. My dream was to buy a campervan to take to craft shows, festivals, and other creative venues and host crochet workshops. I would continue to share the mindful benefits of crochet with as many people as possible.
I hunted for the perfect vehicle. A 1992 Renault Trafic Camper came up for sale in Edinburgh – it felt like a sign, as if my friend Hannah was telling me to go for it! So I did.
My bestie Mel and I flew to the Edinburgh and drove home in the newly named ‘Hannah the Vannah’. What an adventure it was! At times I thought we'd have to ditch the thing and hitchhike, but we made it back (though the van barely made it over 60 mph the whole way).
Unfortunately, my dream campervan is turning into a bit of a nightmare. She failed her MOT, she needs some rust treatment, a new dashboard and a respray. I almost gave up on her – but I owe her a chance to be fixed up and driven around the country sprinkling crochet magic. I owe Hannah's memory a trip to Edinburgh Yarn Festival, too.
This is where you come in…
Believe in the magic of creativity. Support the healing powers of crochet. Please pledge towards Hannah the Vannah's restoration and help me get out in the big wide world to teach the craft! She may be an old van, but there's a whole lot of adventure left in her yet. I need to raise £5,000 for repairs – I would be hugely grateful for your support.
This project successfully funded on 11th March 2020